


Cinnamon and Sugar

by heavymetalbarnes



Series: If They Were Parents [1]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Eventual Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, It Gets Better, M/M, Mickey's kind of a shitty parent, Parent Mickey Milkovich, Protective Ian Gallagher, but then it gets so much worse, he just doesn't know soft love yet, mickey tries his best for his kid i s w e a r
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:52:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21976153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heavymetalbarnes/pseuds/heavymetalbarnes
Summary: All Mickey ever does is try his best. That's all he thought he could do.
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich, Ian Gallagher/Original Character(s), Mickey Milkovich/Original Female Character(s)
Series: If They Were Parents [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1581910
Comments: 8
Kudos: 8





	1. Welcome Home

**Author's Note:**

> so fair warning, i'm literally only on season two of Shameless and i haven't much of a clue as to how Mickey and Ian develop in later seasons, so I'm trying my very best with this pls be gentle with me

Chicago was asleep in the snow, mismatched with lights off for the night and on until the sun rose again. The slush in the streets were turning a dangerous gray and pushed to form the icy way for tires to roll through with more caution than before it snowed. The sidewalks were orange from streetlights and piled with the white menace that continued to flake from above, with a shoveled path down the crooked middle. Mickey actually picked up his feet as he walked as to not slip on the thinly iced concrete. His jacket was zipped, but did absolutely jack shit to keep him as warm as he needed to be, and crossing his arms over himself didn't give the solution he wanted. 

Did he know what time it was, of fucking course he didn't know, time didn't make sense anymore. He'd wake up at five in the morning, just to leave by six, catch the 6:15 if he were lucky, and wait to clock in at seven. Until he left at ten at night, he'd bust his ass restocking clothes, price checking for older women who didn't have any business wearing a dress that tight, doing this, doing that, and for what? Just enough to pay his rent, but barely enough to buy all that he needed to feed two people? It was bullshit, complete and total bullshit. Mickey sighed at the thought of having to do it all again tomorrow, and the day after that, and for the rest of his life. He swallowed the stress he'd been feeling all day and exhaled a mist of hot air meeting cold from his nose. He noticed the street he was on and jumped for joy, mentally because he wasn't about to actually do that and slip. He was a block away from home, from taking a hot shower and hoping that his daughter hadn't used up all the hot water, from kissing his daughter on her head and asking how her day went, and from reheating whatever dinner she made hours previous. Mickey sighed again, but with anticipation. 

He reached a crosswalk and slammed the silver button to change the light. He hated these buttons, they were just designed to make the person think they had the technical capabilities to genuinely switch the light from green to red. He knew the fat fucks of the city just put them there to make their "civilians" feel like they had a part in running the great fuckin' city of Chicago. Fucking assholes. Mickey shifted his weight from one foot to the other for the thirty seconds it took for the blaring red hand to switch to a snow white man walking. The streets were dead almost, so he could've just walked the green light, but it'd been so engrained in his daughter's head that you needed to wait to cross that it'd stuck in his psyche as well. Mickey yawned and created a swirling mass of filmy air surrounding his face. 

\- 

Mickey stepped through the yellowing door of his apartment and sighed a blissful breath of air. He shed his bubble coat and tossed it on the small round table sat next to the door. They at one point used that table and the two chairs as a dinner table, but when Mickey started working later hours, the concept was scraped and they used it when Mickey needed help filling out his taxes and paying bills. He saw the one bedroom apartment cleaner than it had been this morning and thanked whoever made his daughter for taking care of a mental chore he'd made for himself. Mickey locked the door and stepped carefully to the living room, which was a whole five steps from the door. It was late, he'd known that for sure, but had no clue as to what the numbers on the clock would say. 

He knelt beside the sleeping body on the couch blanketed by a binder and bent papers. Her curly hair was puffed out around her face, and her hand still held the pen she was working with before falling asleep. Mickey huffed a chuckle at her appearance. 

"Angel." Mickey whispered, shaking her shoulder gently. When he was responded to by a low groan, he tried again. 

"Angel, wake up." This prompted a slow eye opening, followed with her rubbing her eyes with her knuckles. 

She sat up and held herself up with her free arm, looking around with her hair swishing around her in a matted style. Angel peeled the binder and its papers off of her and tossed it on the floor next to her. 

"When'd you get home?" She asked with a groggy rumble to her waking voice. 

"Just now. You were asleep and had all your school shit still on you." Mickey grinned. 

She nodded and yawned. 

Mickey nodded towards the bedroom behind her. "Get some sleep, we'll talk tomorrow." 

"Don't you work at, like, five?" 

"Nope. They gave me off tomorrow, that new kid Sam offered to cover my shift." Micky spoke with a new enthusiasm. A little college boy, maybe two or so years older than Angelina, started working at the store last month. He'd taken a liking to Mickey, for whatever reason that Mickey didn't bother asking about, and seemed to want to be friendly to him. He had talked to Mickey about taking over his shift so he could catch a day's break, and Mickey wasn't about to play nice and politely decline. 

"Oh. That's cool." Angel nodded. 

"Yeah, so I figured you and I could, y'know, catch up? Maybe go out and get somethin' to eat?" 

"Can't." 

"Why not? You got plans tomorrow?" Mickey chuckled. 

"Yeah, it's called 'school'." 

Mickey shrugged. "Can't you skip a day?" 

"Not anymore, remember? If I miss another day, they're gonna take me to court." 

"Right." Mickey nodded. "Because you were stupid enough to go and skip school with your little hoodrat friends." He removed himself from the living room and placed himself in the kitchen, where he opened the fridge. The shelves were expressing their white metal color under the lightbulb, showing that they had nothing to hold besides the black pot with its lid. Mickey pulled it out and placed it on the counter next to the fridge. He looked over his shoulder to see if Angel would have anything else to add to his remark. 

"What, got nothin' else to say? No defense, no "I'm sorry"?" Mickey was pushing the situation. He grew up in a house where arguing was conversing. He carried that tradition over into his own family, and was conversing with his daughter in a Milkovich manner. 

"I told you why I was skipping, so I don't understand why you're getting mad over it again." Angel retorted. 

"The only reason I'm mad again," Mickey paused to lick the spaghetti sauce off his thumb, "is because you're smart, Angel. You're not supposed to be runnin' off with your little friends, doin' god-knows-what in these streets, and missing out on a chance to get outta this shithole city. That's why I'm mad." 

"I already fucking told you." Now Angel was up and standing in the doorway of the kitchen. "I was skipping to work, because they wouldn’t give me a work pass." 

Mickey slammed the lid back over the pot. His jaw was tense and his knuckles were white. He drew in a quick breath and glared at the cross armed girl. 

"Don't you ever raise your fucking voice at me again. You hear me?" Mickey's voice was steady and low, to refrain from getting loud and having a noise complaint filed from one of the senior neighbors or mothers with five kids under five. 

"Loud and clear." Angel dryly threw back. She dropped her arms and padded off to her bedroom, leaving Mickey in the kitchen hovering over a bowl of cold spaghetti. 

Mickey was now wishing he had to work tomorrow.


	2. Calm Before The Storm

The moment she heard the gold bell jingle above her was when the guilt started to boil in her stomach. It churned and made an itch tingle in her chest, which she scratched at with her gloved hand. She unraveled her scarf from her neck and placed it on the counter she walked up to, to greet the cashier behind it. 

"What's up, honey bun?" 

"My anxiety, Ian, that's what." Angel joked. Her delivery was flat, as her tone almost always was, but it was threaded with genuine nervousness. 

Ian would move from around the counter to stand next to Angel, with a furrowed look on his freckled face. 

He was the owner of the store Angelina frequented, calling it Gallagher's Grocery. There wasn't much of a nutritional value to his corner store, with the stacks of chips, candies, and wooden crates of oranges and bananas that'd be thrown out before the week was over. Ian coined Angel "honey bun" not out of an adult's fancy of calling younger generations food pet-names, but to tease her about the ghost of stealing an actual honey bun's past. 

Ian nudged Angel's shoulder with an elbow, a gentle way of trying to pry into her anxiety. 

"What's goin' on, Angel?" He cooed.

She stripped her hands of their gloves, stacking them on top of her scarf. "My dad."

"Again? What's he upset about this time?"

"Well, in his defense, it's kind of my fault." Angel sighed. "He wanted to hang out with me today because he's off, but I told him I couldn't because of my absences."

"Right."

"So then he went and just got mad out of fuckin' nowhere, like it legit was not a big deal, but he made it seem like it was the worst thing for me to do."

Ian hummed. He rounded the brief corner to return to his spot behind the counter. 

"How many absences do you have?" Ian inquired.

Angelina sighed, sliding her beanie off. 

"Eight, including today."

"Angelina." Now it was Ian's turn to sigh. "Y'know your dad could go to jail because of that, right? A kid can’t miss more than nine days or else-"

"-the parent gets charged, yes, Ian, I know." She finished, slumping her shoulders.

Ian threw a look at Angel. It was fatherly in nature, gentle in appearance. He cared for Angelina, and he felt it to be evident by how he made himself look up how many times a kid could miss school in Chicago. He looked up a lot for her, most of his browser histories consisting of educational things and digital medical dictionaries and researched symptoms. He slid his hand across the counter to rest over her nervously tapping fingers. 

"Everything's gonna be fine, Angel. I promise." Ian smiled, with a genuine sweetness.

Angel, with her brows still furrowed and teeth working on her bottom lip, looked at him. She nodded, to convince her and him that she believed what he was selling her. 

"Alright. Alright, okay, I trust you, I trust that." She was saying that mainly for herself, but figured it would help Ian out too. 

Angelina glanced at the clock behind Ian. "Mind if I clock in a little early?"

Ian exhaled a chuckle. "You're fine."


End file.
